Student died after 999 call was downgraded by under-pressure control room staff, inquest hears

A young woman died after two 999 call handlers wrongly downgraded her parents’ emergency calls because of pressure to hit targets, an inquest has heard.

Kathryn Richmond, 20, lay in agony and struggled for breath after collapsing at home with a ruptured spleen.

Her parents, Alan and Jacqueline, both company directors, called 999 and her case was listed as life-threatening Red 2, meaning an ambulance should have reached her within eight minutes.

But errors made in the call centre resulted in the diversion of two ambulances that had been on their way to her.

Further delays were attributed to the fact that six of the 13 ambulances assigned to her area were off road while crews had meal breaks.

Paramedics finally arrived almost 90 minutes after her panicked parents made the first of two 999 calls.

Miss Richmond, from Poole, Dorset, died in hospital four hours later.

A woman died after a 999 call was twice downgradedCredit:
AFP

Mr and Mrs Richmond described their heartbreak after a consultant general surgeon said that had she received hospital treatment earlier she would probably have survived.

The inquest into the university student’s death heard how control room staff were urged to think twice before putting through too many life-threatening “red” cases because a lack of ambulances meant they struggled to meet response time targets.

A television screen on the wall showed daily performance figures on the number of red calls being met on time and a newsletter handed out outlining target percentages, adding to the pressure.

Clinical supervisor Duncan Smith, who was on shift at the South Western Ambulance Dorset's call centre hub in St Leonards, told the Bournemouth hearing that he had felt under pressure to downgrade the call.

"Yes, there is some pressure, more so in the Dorset hub because the dispatchers

would be sat 2ft in front of me, looking at me, asking if that call is going to be red,” he told coroner Rachael Griffin.

"That pressure is quite direct. They are having trouble making a response time. I know they want you to look at that call urgently because they are not going to make it."

Nicholas McGuinness, senior dispatcher at the hub on the night, agreed that staff were under huge pressure due to a lack of resources.

"We used to have ambulances waiting for calls, now we have a stack of calls that are waiting for ambulances,” he said. "Decisions have to be made about which calls we will go to first.”

Miss Richmond suffered a ruptured spleen due to a rare complication from glandular fever and collapsed at home just after midnight on April 21, 2015.